Photography by
From there to here:
MARIE BARRONET Introduction by
A focused look at immigration
CHIP MOSHER
I
A version of this story ran in Las Vegas Citylife.
OPINION
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NEWS
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GREEN
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FEATURE STORY
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ARTS&CULTURE
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IN ROTATION
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ART OF THE STATE
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FOODFINDS
met French photographer Marie Baronnet last year, after she’d come to Las Vegas to shoot a world championship boxing match for Newsweek. While passing some time together, I asked if she’d had any other photos lying around I might enjoy. I was unprepared for what came next. She plopped her laptop in front of me and pushed a button. A series of pictures from her two-month-long solo trek along the U.S.-Mexican border paraded across the screen. Instantly, I was hooked and emotionally moved by the relentlessly human, and humane, gravity of the images. Every picture from this journey tells more than a story. Each one captures the hint of a lifetime of layered tales beneath the telling flesh of its subjects—such as the defiant hubris of Tea Party confederates at a barbecue in Arizona; the effervescent hope of kids illegally crossing the border into America; or the fatal futility of a truckload of dead bodies picked up from a scorched summer desert outside Tucson. These photos pull the viewer into the story as if the viewer were a participant in the narrative; thus, the gravitational attraction to the humanity in Baronnet’s work. Born in 1972 to a husband-and-wife team of French filmmakers, the tall, lithe Baronnet is married to the famous war photojournalist Stanley Greene. Herself a foreigner in America, she enhances her international work with additional in-depth video interviews of her subjects. More than a photographer, she is a meticulous |
FILM
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MUSICBEAT
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NIGHTCLUBS/CASINOS
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chronicler of oral histories. And her seemingly innocent French accent and striking good looks work as currency to gain access into the restricted, darker fringes of society. She works these assets well, having wedged herself into situations so isolated and dangerous—along the U.S.-Mexican border—that friends and colleagues sometimes have feared for her well-being. The border cuts across the lower abdomen of North America like a ragged scar from a botched appendectomy. This line of demarcation became basically fixed after the Mexican-American War, in 1848, when Mexico lost the following to the United States: California, Nevada, Arizona and Utah, plus sections of Colorado, New Mexico and Wyoming. Today, some people argue that the present-day migration back into these states via the porous border is simply Mexicans reclaiming their occupied territories. Others maintain that the recent and profound influx
“SOUTH” continued on page 12
THIS WEEK
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MISCELLANY
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MAY 3, 2012
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RN&R
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